After the vanity was made and installed, I started to build the linen closet. My dad had made a wall cabinet and underneath it sat a hamper that he made as well. Of course both were made out of poplar. My mom wanted to keep the existing cabinet but she wanted it to be painted. I had an idea to add onto the existing wall cabinet to make it a built-in linen closet. My mom really liked this idea as it would give her more storage. Plus the cabinet would have a built-in hamper too. So I started to take some measurements and came up with a design.
I wanted the linen closet to have a pull down hamper. I looked at various types of hardware to come up with a plan. I built the case of the cabinet out of poplar since the upper cabinet was poplar. The hamper was the starting point for my design. I knew where in the cabinet I wanted the hamper to be placed. Not too low or too high or too tall. I wanted it to be big enough but easy to access.
After I placed the position of the hamper in my drawing I was having trouble figuring out the layout of the drawers. Luckily my friend Denise gave me some much needed design advice for the drawer layout. She suggested starting with a row of 2 drawers, followed by a row of 3 drawers, next the hamper and lastly a taller single bottom drawer.
After the layout of the drawers was determined, I added the drawer dividers. Since I wanted the linen closet to have a similar look to the vanity I decided to do overlay drawer fronts on the bottom part of the cabinet. Since the cabinet was shallow, the drawers were not deep enough to use soft-close hardware. Because of this I decided to dovetail the drawers.
I made the drawer fronts using my go-to Amana cope & stick router bits and painted the panels before gluing up the drawers fronts.
At this point time seemed to get away from me so my friend and old shopmate Matt sprayed the drawer fronts. He is the one who taught me how to spray so I knew they would turn out perfect. The new cabinet and drawer fronts were painted using Benjamin Moore Advance Waterborne Paint in Pale Almond.
I took down the cabinet my dad made to sand and paint that too.
The original wall cabinet had frame and panel doors that slightly overlay the opening. The profile my dad used on his doors was a little different than my go to style. At first I tried to retrofit them by removing the raised panels and cutting down the doors. This did not go well at all so I ended up making new inset doors for the upper cabinet,
While I was building the cabinet we had a new floor and toilet installed. Next I painted the walls Monterey White by Benjamin Moore and started to install the baseboards.Â
The flat stock is 5 inches tall. The flat stock and base cap are from Anderson McQuaid in Cambridge, MA. Their quality and selection are the best. All the trim work was replaced and painted Dove White by Benjamin Moore.
To tie the cabinet back to the vanity I used the same hardware.
I couldn’t be more pleased with how this turned out. It meant a lot to me to add onto the cabinet my dad made over 25 years ago. I know he would have loved this updated look and design, making it our father/daughter built-in linen closet.
Ellen Kaspern Design 